Octatrack MK2 problems (particularly the screen)

Yes thank you. And the unevenness on the Track1 tab triggered me to first look for a contrast setting and then made me think I had a faulty unit. Now I know that it’s not a malfunction and is a limitation of the kind of OLED screen used. I am simply, and I think justly, surprised that such a screen is used by Elektron. But perhaps this was a compromise: OLED is maybe the best screen for dark clubs and Elektron did not want to use the best OLED out there to increase the price even more. I would simply like to hear this or some other explanation from Elektron.

Contrary to some snarky comments here, I am not obsessed with pristine image quality, although parameter lockable porn with 3 LFOs could be interesting :smiley:

And thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion without being a gear forum troll. x x x

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Well, one never learns enough, does he? So you are saying any product on the market today that is using OLED screens will show the image with Ghosting effect ? ( but not that visible on your phone showing bobs )
Thanks again, you have been really useful, now I know something new about tech.
Elektron, pleas do not Photoshop your OLED screens than, show them as they are ( described in the clever post above ), you are misguiding your stupid customers ( being me ) :wink:

Hey, thank you for being civil and honest about your findings.

You still experiencing that led anomaly with trig 5? is there a difference if you set that trigs led to a green or red state?

I recall the gameboys of my youth had a terrible display, laggy as hell and ghosting all over the place… and still we managed to play the games jus fine? Thankfully subtle things such as this have even less of an adverse effect to our music making.

But still, for the sake of open communication about any possible “first user” issues, I do think this discussion should be allowed as long as it is done in a civil manner. Heck I even learned stuff about shortcomings of OLED technology and am now much better informed wrt why pron looks the way it does on my mates phone :tongue:

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Or maybe they would have liked to, but there simply isn’t an OLED display part available with the same resolution and physical dimensions as the LCD that was in the Mk1.

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No, especially Samsung has by now figured out how to make high-resultion color OLED panels that don’t suffer from this issue.

It’s however unlikely that we’ll see these advances show up in the kind of low-resolution monochrome displays Elektron needs for its products though.

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Mine just arrived. And looks good.

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you have this hi tec samsung OLED haha :slight_smile: looks great

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Yeah that’s also a possibility.

Thank you. Can you make some more screenshots please? The screen flickers when photographed. Is that gray area on the Track 1 tab because of the flicker or is it really gray? What happens when you select other tracks to highlight their tabs?

I had packed the Octatrack after realizing these issues to return it. I haven’t unpacked lt yet. :))))

Frankly, I don’t mind the unevenness of the button lights, as long as they are not a malfunction. Today I am going to a music store to see if they have a demo unit. I will check that one out. There is still a small possibility that I landed on a badly manufactured specimen.

And thank you for your kind words. :slight_smile:

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Sure, sometimes camera captures images that are not visible by eye. But I only upload shots with display color differences that I can constantly see. And yes, they are there. Especially at the top and bottom of display. There are brighter and darker lines. In AED mode I can see two brighter thick lines at the top.
And yes, some buttons (stop button on photo) passes more light out.

Is it normal? I don’t know. To me it’s also quite hard to understand why part of pixels behave its own way (maybe software coding issue) but I’m gonna accept my new gear as it is and use it to make myself happy :smile: :zap:

/slow english writer

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The above photos from @WeirdFishes show really nicely how the difference in brightness depends on the number of pixels that are lit on every horizontal line. That’s actually really cool to see.

If I were to design a UI for a display like this, I’d try to keep te number of pixels lit per line about the same across the display.

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That’s exactly what I just realised. Kind of shadows of displayed items :wink:
Maybe pixels in line must share power?

These images are really good depictions of the issue. Thank you for sharing. I am still keeping the Octatrack and hope for a proper explanation from Elektron. I also want to keep and work with the Octatrack. I am not looking for an excuse to return it, but rather a good explanation that takes care of my worries and makes me keep the Octatrack :slight_smile:

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oh and it’s not only trigger 5. Many buttons have similar unevenness with backlit lights. But as I said, I don’t care much about that as long as it is not a malfunction or bad production quality. On the other hand, how difficult would it be to make those lights illuminate the buttons evenly? :slight_smile:

Why ? Are you concerned that with the time it might become even more uneven ? ( in the case it is bad q or malfunc. )

Well obviously. Why would I settle down for a unit that is not manufacturing problems? I am not saying the Octatrack has them, but I would like a confirmation from Elektron. If they do what they have done in the similar digitakt thread, they will probably not comment any further than saying it’s normal (unless I missed other responses by them). We’ll see.

It must be noted that Elektron manufactures the hardware that uses these OLED components, not the OLEDs themselves.

The manufacturer of this particular OLED is probably some no-name brand, but the “brand name” version wouldn’t have been any better. There are no “premium”-level manufacturers of this type of component in this form-factor/resolution/etc.

Yes, each LED in the OLED consumes current, so the more that are on, the more power it will draw. This certainly could account for some slight dimness in certain pixels/rows.

There can be tolerances in say, the voltage regulators or caps or even the OLED itself, but I doubt you’re going to get a much better “specimen.”

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It’s slightly disturbing. I watched the display of my Rytm fade away and now there is another display issue with mkII units. I’m gonna skip them and see what mkIII brings.
Elektron is a disaster with quality control and consistency lately. Who needs this shiny colorful buttons and screens if they are unreliable. Strange design decisions.
A higher quality screen costs like, what, 20$ more. How much hassle is it to handle returns because of bad screens. I don’t get how this pays out.

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End of my first evening with new mkII.
Turned it off, went out studio room, upstairs to bedroom, happy and relaxed.
Put an eye at elektronauts and then… I realised one thing:

I didn’t even noticed any display :yum:

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